


Horrid is the Word You Want

by okapi



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Boat Race, M/M, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after boat race night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horrid is the Word You Want

**Author's Note:**

  * For [preux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/preux/gifts).



> A bit of bally rot for my friend's birthday.

“Good morning, Jeeves,” I said, prying open one of the peepers. At least that’s what I meant to say, what I had hoped to say, but what sprang forth from the parched lips was something of a croak, an unholy offspring of an angry gargoyle and a stuffed frog.   
  
Nevertheless, Jeeves understood. Jeeves always understands.   
  
“Good morning, sir.”   
  
And what my crusted orb rested upon was none other than a glass of the elixir known as Jeeves’ Special. Blessed be his holy name and all cherubim and seraphim and whatsits before him because the morning after the University boat races the young master does not need a cup that cheers but does not inebriate, no sir, he needs a heady dose of the hair of leg of the spider that did not bite him.   
  
But that’s putting the end before the beginning, which is worse than  _ in medias whatsit _ and won’t do.   
  
“Jeeves,” I said, sitting up with a groan, “the young master is not so young anymore.”    
  
“Time marches on, sir, for us all.”   
  
I nodded, letting the ambrosial cocktail slide down the old gullet and do its divine work on the aging bean. “Why I remember when pinching a policeman’s helmet and paying a fiver was the worst I got up to on boat race night, but last night, well, it takes the proverbial three-tiered Methuselean cake.”   
  
“Indeed, sir?”   
  
“I was having a raucous good time, as I always do, when up comes G. D’Arcy Cheesewright, throwing his weight about with a ‘Ho!’ and a ‘Ho, ho!’ like a Times Square Saint Nick and he had the gall to besmirch the Wooster honour. Said we were cowards of the first order or some such!”   
  
“Most disagreeable.”   
  
“Well it couldn’t stand, could it? So, on behalf of the fighting ancestors, I demanded satisfaction and he challenged me to a duel. A duel! On boat race night! When I was already schnozzled up the schnozzle-gummy! So I showed him! There was one of those menageries, if that’s the word I want, quite near the spot where we were festooning. You know, circus stuff. Lions, tigers, and bearded ladies that make Aunt Agatha look like la Morehead. The crew and I’d had a spot of fun running through it earlier in the day. Anyway, I challenged Cheesewright to enter the Spider Cave, last man standing the winner.”      
  
Jeeves gave me a look of thingness. No, the other thingness. “And?” he asked with furrowed brow.   
  
I grinned. “Ol’ Bertie did the Wooster name proud! The doors had but closed, and the pumpkin head was screaming that he’d been bitten and was dying. Just goes to show, Jeeves, that doing Swedish exercises in the nude before breakfast doeth not maketh the man.”   
  
“Certainly not. But was Mister Cheesewright all right?”   
  
“Oh yes, he’d just got a scratch from on a nail in the wall. And the coppers were too busy buzzing about, fussing with the younger set about stealing their helmets and whatnot to worry about us. So, now,” I set the empty glass on the table by the bed, “with the willowy frame restored, what say you and I be all stoic and stalwart together? Stiffen the uppers and lowers together as one, so to speak.” I waggled the eyebrows.   
  
“Perhaps it would be prudent if you bathed first.” He held up my second-best dressing gown and I accepted the invitation, rising like a phoenix from the ashen bedclothes.    
  
“Right, ho.” I sniffed. The ol’ bod was a bit ripe after the night’s adventures, and one did not want to disappoint the keeper of one’s heart in the boudoir.   
  
Jeeves wafted round the bed and collected the glass.    
  
Then, as the silver tray shimmered past, a thought tickled the noggin. “Say, Jeeves, I know ‘secrets of the guild’ and whatnot, but now that we are, well, what we are, am I ever to learn what’s in that mixture of yours?”   
  
And then the cove, without so much of a bat of those beautiful blue e’s, put a gloved hand between the sheets and produced, like one of those rabbit-in-the-hat chappies, a hirsute, eight-legged beast of a wiggling bedfellow.    
  
“Hair of the leg of the spider that did not bite you, sir.”   
  
And at the sight of the enormous arachnid, the not-so-young master bid a fond, but rest assured, impermanent, Adieu to the world. 


End file.
